In Hongsheng District, an unmarked airship cut swiftly through the sky.
Because Yuanren Company had chosen Hongsheng District as the site for both its Great Shun branch headquarters and its ecological park, countless airships, engineering vehicles, and transport trucks passed through the area every day. While the locals had initially stared up at the sky for long stretches, nowadays, whenever the drone of propellers sounded overhead, they hardly did more than twitch an eyelid.
Only the children still found endless delight in it; whenever an airship flew low, they would cheer and brandish their toy model airships, chasing after it for a while.
Inside the airship's main cabin, Corva leaned back against the tilted metal frame of the bulkhead, resting his head on his crossed arms. Lazily, he said, "Skarson, is there really any need to rush like this?
"All the previous anomalies turned out to be trivial matters. Wouldn't it have been enough just to report them to the Jibei Dao Government Affairs Department? Why did we have to make this trip ourselves?"
Skarson sat behind a round table, his frame seemingly wound tight at every moment. "We are members of the Investigation Delegation," he replied. "We came here to uncover problems. Until the investigation concludes, we shouldn't place absolute trust in the Jibei Dao Government Affairs Department. Every anomaly point must be investigated in person. As members of this delegation, we have a duty to fulfill."
Corva threw his hands up in mock surrender. "Alright, alright, I get it. But hasn't it crossed your mind that these so-called reports might just be smoke and mirrors thrown out by certain people? Running us ragged, creating an atmosphere of tension, all to serve whatever despicable schemes they're harboring in the dark?"
He crossed his arms over his chest. "If that's truly the case, I have no desire to play along."
Skarson looked at him. "I thought you didn't care about such things."
Corva shrugged. "Just because I prefer not to dwell on things outside our investigation doesn't mean I'm blind to them." He wiggled his expressive eyebrows. "Partner, I don't want to be someone else's tool. It makes people look at us like monkeys in a circus."
Skarson said, "I don't care how others see us. All I know is that our perseverance is meaningful."
"You really are an oddity, Skarson."
Corva sighed in amazement. He turned his head to peer down below. "Hm? Are we almost there?"
Skarson glanced over. "A bit further."
"Then we'll be leaving the city proper. Don't we need to log a notice? What a hassle."
"To be precise, it's the city's outer fringes. Still, out of respect for the Jibei Dao Government Affairs Department, and to be cautious, we should submit a report."
"Fine, I'll do it. Wouldn't want it to look like I did nothing at all in the end."
Grumbling under his breath, Corva tapped his boundary credential, spoke briefly into the connection, and after an acknowledgment chime rang, said, "Done."
Seeing that the airship was slowing down, he glanced below. "This should be it, right? Let's head down."
Skarson stood up and picked up the case beside him. Corva grabbed his own case and followed. The two quickly moved out onto the landing platform and leapt off.
A cloud of dust billowed as they landed. It was plain to see that this was an entirely abandoned fringe of the city: a single tall building stood towering over several low, modified shanties; the roads were rutted with potholes, the guardrails coated in rust, and billboards had collapsed into muddy puddles; unruly weeds and wildly overgrown trees choked the ground everywhere.
A small gang had once occupied this place. However, due to the heavy influx of investments into Hongsheng District earlier, followed by vigorous crackdowns spurred by the arrival of the Investigation Delegation, alongside frequent sweeps by perimeter patrols, the local gangs and vagrants had long since been thoroughly purged.
Corva tapped his boundary credential, but only bursts of intermittent static and buzzing came through. Just a hundred meters or so further out lay the true wilderness beyond the city, and without proximity to the National Boulevard, the field here had degraded to a faint trickle.
The silhouettes of stray animals occasionally flitted through the building floors, and swarms of flying insects were everywhere. Yet as the two arrived, the insects seemed instinctively to sense danger, taking flight en masse and forming a dense, dark cloud.
Corva gave a dismissive hiss toward the swarm. Glancing around, he remarked, "There's not a ghost of a shadow here, let alone any trace of those things. Looks like another wild goose chase."
"Don't jump to conclusions," Skarson replied. Tearing his gaze away from their surroundings, he strode toward the half-abandoned building ahead.
"Wait up." Corva hurried after him.
The building had likely once been a shopping mall. Once inside, both immediately sensed something amiss. Exchanging a silent glance, they quickened their pace and soon arrived at the rear section that had once served as a warehouse. It was pitch-black here, shrouded in total darkness.
Yet the moment they stepped in, their brows twitched faintly. Instantly, in their eyes, the entire world transformed.
At the center before them, a flickering light expanded and contracted erratically, casting the surrounding environment in an eerie, murky purple.
"An anomaly point! How could one appear here?"
Corva exclaimed in surprise. An anomaly point was the herald of an imminent fissure eruption. But in a place like Center City, any fissure that formed would be absorbed by the Fumu; under normal circumstances, an isolated fissure could never manifest.
Unless...
A vigilant look crossed his face as he scanned the surroundings.
Staring at the fluctuating light, Skarson said with a grim expression, "It's extremely unstable. It looks to be on the verge of erupting. We have to deal with it immediately. Protocol says report to the Government Affairs Department first." He pressed his boundary credential, but only waves of static hissed through. They were too far from the central field, and the signal was far too weak.
Corva immediately said, "I'll make the call; you handle it. Don't wait!" With that, he turned around and walked a few paces back toward the exit.
Only then did Skarson lower his hand. Stepping forward, he opened his case and retrieved a pair of contamination-insulating gloves. Taking a deep breath, an intensely solemn expression taking over his features, he reached out to press his hands against it.
Such fissures could be stabilized and suppressed through a martial artist's field, but it demanded intense concentration without the slightest margin for error. Fortunately, both of them were professionally trained.
The instant his hands drew close to that radiance, however, he caught a whiff of anomaly. "Wait, this is—"
Before he could make sense of it, an intense surge of wind pressure and a jarring sound erupted from behind him. His battle-honed body reacted instinctively. Without turning around, he leapt forward, the fire of spirituality flaring to life across his form at the exact same moment.
His reaction had been textbook perfection. Yet for some unknown reason, his body suddenly felt dreadfully heavy; the leap that should have launched him instantly lagged by a beat, and the fire of spirituality welling around him barely manifested before a fist enveloped in blue light shattered the faint glow. The jin surging through the strike tore unhindered into his body, laying waste to everything inside with wanton abandon.
Skarson's body shuddered violently. He was hurled more than ten meters through the air, crashing hard into the far wall. Web-like fractures dented the load-bearing wall, raining crumbling plaster and brick fragments down around him.
He slid down, collapsing into a heap of rubble and dust. Without the defense of the fire of spirituality, that single strike had inflicted catastrophic internal hemorrhaging and snapped his spine clean through.
He knew what that was.
"Cold Claw..."
It was a third-class relic specially issued to them by the Investigation Delegation before their journey to Jibei Dao Center City. It possessed the power to suppress limit-breaking level blend organisms and subdue entities from the opposite side, but it could just as easily be turned against a martial artist.
And if someone turned it on him at that exact moment, he was practically defenseless.
He heard footsteps approaching from across the room. Straining to lift his head, he watched Corva's figure draw near, his face half-shadowed, half-lit by the pulsating glow.
"Why?" he rasped.
Having struck successfully, Corva did not pursue the attack. He seemed completely unconcerned about Skarson recovering. Dusting off his hands, he said, "Relax. We're partners, after all. I won't take your life—that'd be impossible to explain anyway. How about it? Feeling a little more at ease?"
He walked over to his case, rummaged through it for a moment, and retrieved a cardboard canister from a hidden compartment.
Walking back to the radiant mass, he tore open the sealed rim of the canister and dumped it downward. Out spilled a dark powder that looked like charred ash.
In an instant, as if oil had been poured onto a blaze, the light erupted into frenzied activity, and something seemed on the verge of clawing its way out.
"You... you're summoning them?!" Skarson's expression was one of shocked fury and utter disbelief.
Corva gave him a sideways glance. "Don't get so worked up. Why would I do something that stupid? As you know, I couldn't pull that off even if I wanted to. This is merely an illusion. But once things wrap up here, the lingering traces will make outsiders believe a fissure opened here, and that an entity from the other side slipped through."
Skarson regained his composure, his voice dropping low. "You're targeting the Jibei Dao Government Affairs Department?"
"Of course."
Corva casually crushed the cardboard canister in his grip; as sparks flickered across his fingers, it quickly disintegrated into ash. He spread his arms wide.
"At the end of the month, Jibei Dao is holding its public conference. Observers and delegates from across the world will be present. Tell me, if a security catastrophe breaks out right at that moment—especially if it's proven that a potentially massive monstrosity crossed over, and right inside Center City's urban districts no less—what do you think the foreign nations will think? What will the people in Great Shun think?
"At that point, Jibei Dao's security defenses become an absolute joke, and every favorable conclusion we reached earlier will have to be overturned.
"That's right—we affirmed them earlier, admitting they did a splendid job. But now, we get to repudiate them. Quite the dramatic flair, isn't it?"
With that, he spun in place, shimmying his shoulders in a flamboyant, unrestrained dance pose.
"Ah, and then there's Section Chief Chen. As the supreme head of security defense, he will undeniably have to take the blame. Oh, and you're in on this too, my partner..."
He spread his hands, swaying his body as he took several steps forward. "You see, because of your spar with him, your favorite pair of gloves ended up in his hands, and your injuries haven't fully healed over these past few days. If not for that, how could you have failed to suppress the entity that suddenly burst forth here, letting it invade your body so easily?
"Yet miraculously, through sheer, unyielding willpower, you wrestled control over yourself and the creature, urging me to strike. Left with no choice, I attacked and wounded you. But because I couldn't bear to strike a lethal blow, I only severely incapacitated you—which, alas, allowed the entity to escape."
Having reached this point, he snapped his fingers with a sharp crack and smiled. "Well? Isn't it a flawless script?"
Chapter 948